dr. Boris Berenfeld, dr. Tatiana Krupa, GlobalLab International, London, UK

Despite common perceptions that individualized learning is one-to-one mentoring or adaptations of content and curriculum for individual students, the Global Students Laboratory demonstrates that learning, ironically, can be more individualized when students collaborate in globally-distributed groups. This paper explores how the web-based Global Lab platform enables student-directed projects where every learner is an explorer. Through participation in collaborative projects designed around instructional topics, students acquire both content and process skills. As they master collaborative problem-solving, we enable them to develop their own projects using a scaffolded environment. They apply everything they have learned, including how to use probes and collect quantitative and qualitative data. The platform supports probes and smartphone applications, enabling data to be streamed directly into the Global Lab database. There, all data is displayed on a world map based on where each data set was collected, and students can graph, visualize, and analyze the information. Again, the irony is learners follow the same protocols and procedures to capture data, but the results always vary. Despite the sameness that is built into data collection, the data inevitably differ. This tele–collaborative inquiry allows learners to work on their own, at their pace, but as part of a community of like-minded peers.